I started making hats for my son's college baseball team because I wasn't impressed with the options the school offered. I began with a cheap hat press, experimenting with iron-on letters in my garage. What started as a way to create custom hats quickly evolved into something more. I enjoyed combining my favorite designs and getting creative, spelling out whatever I wanted. Sometimes, I made hats to show off school spirit, but more often, I crafted hats with 3-5 letter phrases that made people laugh often with a bit of a cheeky or inappropriate twist.

There were even nights when friends came over after a late night out, and we’d start making hats that were a little more risqué. We'd come up with inside jokes that only those with a dirty mind would catch, all while sipping on too many drinks. These late-night hat-making sessions were fun and spontaneous, but over time, the hobby began to take on a life of its own.

As word spread, I started getting requests for custom hats for all kinds of occasions group vacations, bachelorette parties, college frat parties, and pretty much anything else people considered a celebration. Making hats for free was fun at first, but it quickly became overwhelming. That's when I decided to turn my hobby into a business and officially launched dikHatz mainly to start charging my freeloading college buddies!

To be honest, though, it was my friends who really pushed me to start this hat company. Those late nights spent making hats together sparked some of the best patch ideas, and I realized I could share this fun with a larger audience. The name “dikHatz” with the tagline “Keep it Covered” might sound a little racy to some, but not to my loving and God-fearing mother. She had no idea that when she named me Daniel Isaac Kirkman, she’d inadvertently given me initials that would lead to some hilarious moments in college. It wasn’t until years later, when my college buddies started calling me “Dik,” that my mom realized the unintended humor behind it.